FractalTrek

Mac OSEntertainment

FractalTrek is an app for exploring the world of Mandelbrot FractalSpace using a futuristic TNG GUI. It lets you create amazingly beautiful, shallow-depth, quasi-3D fractals using the SAM (Stripe Average Method) gradient coloring.

The first time the app is launched, the user guide is shown. On subsequent launches, the main fractal panel is always shown first. To show the main fractal panel from the user guide, click the MAIN button in the top-left of the view. To show the user guide from the main fractal panel, click the EndCap button with the "?" (Question Mark) title in the upper-right of the view (see the screenshots below).

You really should read the User Guide first, but if you want to jump right in…

QUICK START

As you can see in the first screenshot below, there is a large green Mandelbrot fractal at a 2X zoom factor in the center of the view. Click somewhere in a green region near the black interior. You can wait for the fractal to render with the new position, or you can immediately click the 'Zoom In' button that is just below and to the far-right of the fractal image. That will zoom in on the fractal by a factor of 5X times the current zoom factor.

When auto rendering is turned on (toggle it with the 'AutoRender' button), every time you make a parameter change to the fractal, FractalTrek automatically aborts the current render and immediately starts rendering a new fractal with the new parameter set.

When you turn auto rendering off, you can make multiple parameter changes and then click the 'Render' button to see all of the new changes at once.

To change the coloring of your fractal, click the Gradient Well at the top right of the view. This will load all of the gradient presets into the right side of the view. Then just click any gradient preset.

The fractals that are rendered in the Fractal Previewer are not antialiased. That way they render 9 times faster than the fractal images that you export. Of course they won't look as good as the export fractals. Preview fractals automatically render to the same size as the Fractal Previewer, so depending on your monitor size, and the position and zoom factor, you can save a fair amount of time if you work in Windowed Mode instead of Full-Screen Mode (use the 'MODE' button to toggle it).

FractalTrek lets you export fractal images up to 4096x4096 pixels in size, and they are always rendered using 9x (3x3) supersampled antialiasing for stunning images.

FractalTrek is multi-threaded, so you can export multiple fractals simultaneously, and still continue to explore new preview fractals at the same time.

When you are ready to dive into the SAM details, click the SAM chapter button in the User Guide.